It is a “how much bull
I’m willing to put up with and how much time I’m willing to invest in retrying the boss fights ad nauseam” issue.
This is all I’ll say on this matter and we’ll acknowledge that there are different playstyles and different preferences about the difficulty of RPGs.
Ever since level scaling has been a thing in questing zones, the balance has always been a little off! I remember going through Northrend on my Highmountain Warrior when they came out and having a really tough time.
Also the spectral postmen in Stratholme. Never used to immediately wipe to those before scaling was introduced.
I liked mobs being tough in Classic, but I can’t put my finger on what doesn’t make it as satisfying in later expansions.
I wasn’t getting bodied at 70 but as i’ve levelled, I have felt i got weaker.
Even in full 558 gear i can’t survive as easily as i could.
But sure, lets make it harder to level my alts now, you know, the ones that DON’T have a pet to facetank for them.
When mobs are difficult due to deliberate design decision (“here’s a level 21 worgen elite roaming around silverpine, you’re probably going to die”) it enhances the feeling that the world is more than just you and your power trip.
When they’re difficult due to scaling weirdness, it’s no longer deliberate design, it’s stupid overlooked ‘bugs’ that small indie company can’t fix because they refuse to pay enough developers to do so. Nothing satisfying about that, just ‘bad’ code.
(also, the tone of the game has shifted as we kill more and more gods - getting two-shot by johnny rando out in the overworld doesn’t make much narrative sense these days - it did when you were rookie adventurer still wet from the teet)
FF14 seems really specific in this issue too, but it is sadly not surprising as it seems the genesis for the more recent discourse was the Wuk Lamat duty and I’m quite sure you have a healing ability for that. Genuinely boggles the mind and I’m saying this as an average andy.
Not to mention the current savage tier is a bit of a joke with boss HP
Reading the leaked 5.5e PHB, I really want to play a College of Dance bard and not just because of Luthien
Finally the collection of melee glass cannons is complete: the monk as Dex/Wis, the bladesinger as Dex/Int, and the dancer as Dex/Cha.
they have some level of tuning for pvp, but I don’t think the playerbase would be very receptive to the way FFXIV does it, with having separate pvp abilities, it would also be difficult to do with open world pvp.
there does need to be more of a separation, but I can’t see that being a high priority as it’s only obvious in world pvp.
You could’ve gone bladepact warlock no hexblade or swords bard.
“swords gets medium armour” yeah but they still have less AC than a bladesinger so it counts.
Now that I’ve thought about it, I think what also gets me is I feel like you have to press more buttons to do the same amount of damage as the expansions go on, or maybe it’s entering a new content with a full toolkit already.
I started playing Dragonflight recently and couldn’t solo the fire elemental boss in the first zone. 
I can’t remember if it’s your 1-2-3 or the LB button you get told to press that heals you but there is a heal and frankly that duty isn’t even hard, just frustrating to do (but that is a me gripe on the first half of MSQ for DT).
Savage has no real DPS check this tier, it’s all do mechanic and your rotation best as you can and you still kill. Our first clear on m1s had 4-5 deaths and healer LB and we still made it albeit close.
There really is no excuse to complain about Easy or Very Easy Difficulty solo duties at this point. I do not care what your excuse is or isn’t but if you complain about things being “too hard wahh” then you are literally part of the bigger problem of square not wanting to put more effort into harder content for the players who are capable of doing it.
I.e not the true casuals and story players.
Level scaling was a mistake.
Playing LOTRO and having fun without scaling lets me appreciate that.
It’s being deliberately picky about it, but lotro does have scaling. They’ve just (sensibly) limited it to instances and solo scenarios instead of open world content.
That… also has it’s drawbacks though honestly, some later solo instances can take a -very- long time because of it. And by a long time I mean there’s a later one, I believe it’s in moria, that can take upwards of 45 minutes depending on your class.
Time to kill for mobs is going to vary so much by spec and gear, and a lot of specs feel terrible in the early part of an expansion because they don’t have the secondary stats (usually haste, sometimes other stuff) to really ‘come alive’ and flow properly.
Generally the reward of having more buttons to press to kill stuff is that pressing buttons is fun though, so even if you do need to press 1233411122245151 instead of 123, it’s at least more engaging in the moment to moment gameplay.
In theory.
I do think it’s good that you no longer feel the need to abandon a zone because every mob is grey and you’re getting no experience from questing there anymore. The entire game is set up to encourage blitzing past all content to get to max level ASAP for the endgame stuff.
Starting to think adding new levels is the mistake. No reason we couldn’t have stuck at level 70, unlocked hero talents via the MSQ* and just gone straight into the geargrind.
*with an appropriate skip for alts once you’ve finished it once.
If they’re not going to treat leveling as a proper portion of the game, then they may as well just be rid of it.
The other reason they keep it is so they can reset people’s secondary stat %s to make us re-scale those up, but how about you just…don’t? Back in the day it wasn’t “365 crit rating”, it was “1% crit”.
They’re not gonna get rid of levelling, obvs. Midnight’s gonna bring a new statsquish with its 10 more levels to 90, and TLT will bring us back to 100. Again. Doesn’t have to though.
I watched a video about DDO recently and it encourages levelling over and over again with the ‘Reincarnation’ system where you reset yourself back to level 1 and get a permanent boon in the process. It’s a neat idea, but utterly unworkable for WoW in its current form.
the fact theres so few games anymore that do this is just sad. i say this as well from a rpers perspective because just one-shotting a 30 levels below you mob is a second irritation compared to scaled mobs taking full fight duration/limiting where you can use for events. ive gotten used to it from years playing gw2 where this scalings always been present and makes some fantastic rp areas unusable unless you can fight like hell between emotes.
similarly, this is a symptom of it. the fact rogues and in my experience mages (in slands at least) could have that difficulty not from any factor but scaling grinds my gears
I was gonna say, bladesingers may not have many hit points but good luck ever landing a hit on them
I’ve reached max level on priest
Already started getting on the rep grind for fashion
To save your sanity ,check which quests you can hold off on for a while. Coming sunday is Darkmoon Faire.
In other news, thank god I got to about halfway from 79-80 before server went down so, I won’t be hit by the nerf superhard, unless I start levelling alts. Good thing most of the alts I got are somewhat geared so I should be fine anyhow…
Leveling nerf?!
Blizzard found that the scaling around level 70 was far too generous and made combat far too easy for people with Dragonflight S4 gear, so they’re retuning the scaling around level 70 to make it less of a walk in the park.
Their statement boiled down to “people are killing enemies so quickly that they don’t even get to experience their full rotation in a fight and that’s bad.”
Heaven forbid our characters ever actually feel powerful.
Rather than “Oooh, you’re so amazing, champion! Now go fetch me 10 NuBear Butts!” 